Roblox went down, forcing children outside for Halloween
After three days offline, the popular gaming site said Sunday that it was back. In the meantime, children were freaking out.
This weekend, children around the country began acting strange, as if they were emerging from a trance. They moped around their houses. They started hanging out with their parents. They powered up long-neglected electronics in search of entertainment. Some even — gasp! — went outside.
The culprit for their spooky behavior? Roblox, or the lack of it.
Roblox, the gaming platform that is wildly popular among children, especially those ages 9-12, was knocked offline starting Thursday afternoon.
On Sunday morning, Roblox’s official Twitter account wrote that the company had identified the “root cause and solution” and was working to restore the platform. Hours later, the company tweeted that it was “back online everywhere!”
The platform, a blocky, colorful online universe that hosts millions of unique games created by independent developers — some who are young adults or even teenagers themselves — attracts more than 43 million players every day. So social media was soon filled with horrified children who could not log in and frustrated parents demanding answers.
“My goddaughter outside playing with a soccer ball had me thinking the world was ending,” one person tweeted. “Turns out Roblox down.”
A Roblox spokesperson referred to the company’s tweets but did not comment further. The company also shot down a viral rumor that a Chipotle promotion that began shortly before the outage had caused the platform to crash.
In the meantime, parents were left to cope with stressed-out children. In Aliso Viejo, California, Harper Deal, 9, has been watching television, scrolling through TikTok and decorating her house for Halloween. She usually plays Roblox with her cousin who lives out of state.
“When Roblox shut down, I haven’t really talked to her that much,” Harper said in an interview, before rushing to her room to check again if the platform was back online. “I don’t know what to do.”
Harper’s mother, Aishia Deal, noticed Harper had been exhibiting some odd behavior: “Yesterday, her and her best friend actually had to go outside and play,” she said.
Normally, Deal said, Harper gets home from school and immediately logs into the online universe with her friends, sometimes without even pausing to eat.
“It’s what they do, so they’re a little lost,” she said. “I’ve never seen my daughter this much in one day.”
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